Doc

Shooting in the woods poses an even bigger challenge. I recall a shot that I took at a mere 25 yards where the arrow found a tiny twig that I failed to clear out of my shooting lane. It all worked out ok as the arrow deflected into the jugular (a long ways from where I was aiming .....lol), but the point is that even at close range, there was a tiny obstruction that I couldn't see. I can imagine what kinds of unseen obstacles that could be present in one of these long distance shots of say 50 or 60 yards. By the way, my shooting lanes are flawlessly groomed now .... lol. As far as shooting expertise is concerned, I used to work with a guy who claimed and demonstrated his ability to hold coffee-cup sized groups at 50 yards. In fact I saw him do it - shot after shot with no misses. This guy was constantly taking long shots because he knew he could on the archery range, but he was constantly wounding and losing deer until one year when he set his all time personal best with a grand total of 5 shot and lost deer. That was when he gave up bowhunting. Yes, perhaps his tracking skills could have used a bit of sharpening ..... lol. However, the point is that marksmanship does not always convert to bowhunting success. And then there is the point that I made in the reply above about the results not always being a case of how good the bowhunter is at shooting. Often the deer has it's own input into the results. The farther away you are the more input the deer gets to have.

Are you going to "partner-up" with him or aren't you into trapping? When I was into trapping, I always had a partner. It started off with my grandfather, and later when I got married, it was my wife. And later yet my two boys were added into the activity. It just always seemed to make the whole trapline bigger and better with multiple ideas on sets and methods.

It never ceases to amaze me how many different scientific fields that hunters have become expert at. Now we are all geneticists. It's a good thing that these scientific fields are such easy things to pick up on the side, or we would never have time to pursue our main careers.

Apparently all bucks are not all that synchronized when it comes to velvet shedding. I'm beginning to think there is a greater difference than we think. I've never read anything on that subject.

125 grain simply because that's what flies well out of my bow and also being an advocate of close shots in bowhunting, I never had a need to experiment with the super-light heads.

A deer's walking speed is 3.5 MPH (The Deer of North America - Leonard Lee Rue). Using a very fast bow of 300fps and a shot distance of 60 yards, the arrow is in flight for 0.6 seconds. In that time, a walking deer moves 36.96 inches. That's enough to change a perfectly aimed hit from the kill zone to just behind the deer. If a calm feeding deer takes a step or two forward (as they often do when feeding), he most likely is not moving at the 3.5 MPH walking speed because of inertia. So maybe the average speed is only half of that. That would put the arrow squarely in the guts. I am not even talking about the string-jumping ability of deer, I am simply talking about a case where a grazing deer simply takes a couple of steps forward when the arrow is released. So, it is my contention that even those who can hold perfect super-tight groups at 60 yards in archery range conditions may very well be taking a super low-percentage shot with perhaps a 50-50 chance of bad results. That's why bowhunting is always described as a super-close range method of hunting. That's not to say that some bowhunters won't have success at ridiculously long distances. Anything is possible (including bad shots that wind up working ..... lol). It's just not something that I would care to take chances with.

I wonder if Alvin and the Chipmunks are having some kind of effect on deciding what is protected and what is not.

I wound up moving it today to a brighter area nearby. We'll see if that works. I think it will. I was about ready to check another spot anyway because all I am seeing are the same does over and over. But I am a bit disappointed that Primos didn't see this as a possible problem and put in a more intelligent exposure system. The worse thing is that I will never know what kind of a monster buck may have been in those pictures ...... lol. Or maybe it was a mountain lion!

I got two for WMU 8N

I sure do hope you are wrong about people relying on internet forums to get all of their information. That is even worse than passing off bogus info here ..... lol. Forums are predominantly opinions, viewpoints and occasionally something that is based soley on a person's logic. Very rarely are there any forum discussions that actually involve undisputed documented sources. While forums may be good for instigating thought on various issues, it probably does not sit real high on my list of credible sources of info....lol. But if you are right and there are some who are taking forum comments as being gospel, that sounds like a much bigger problem to worry about than what people are saying on these forums.

I've been getting quite a few badly under-exposed daytime pictures up in this one section of woods up on the hill. It's an area we call the "dark woods" because that's exactly what it is. Its all old-growth hemlock trees that almost close out daylight. The problem is (I think) is that what sun there is that gets through creates these very bright blotches in the picture, and I think the camera is mis reading the actual light in the picture and is turning off the IR and trying to take a regular picture. That just isn't working out. There is no problem with night-time pictures. The IR comes into use and it takes great pictures. But a nice sunny daylight picture really confuses it. Last year I had my Bushnell Trophy set up there and never had a problem, but the Primos just doesn't seem to like that heavy lighting contrast. Anybody else ever have a problem like this? No problem at night though:

I guess it probably makes some sense that during what is normally considered the "off-hours" some deer (big and not so big) probably get booted out of their safe-havens by hunters who have gotten cold, bored, or just plain restless. One of the things that I used to count on before the advent of all this cold-weather gear, was the hunter movement that you could count on after an hour or two went by each day. Unfortunately with the space age clothing materials it seems like that isn't quite as big a factor as it used to be. I really miss those guys that use to drive for me during gun season ..... lol.

I often wonder how any of us really know anything about "most hunters". I'm trying to think of a single person who has the resources to be able to credibly say much of anything about "most hunters". Whenever I read or hear something negative about "most hunters" I guess I probably get a little defensive about such "broad-brush" statements because of the negative image some of that kind of stuff has on us all to anyone reading it. But anyway, I really don't understand how anyone could ever know what "most hunters" do, or think or how they act. Nothing to do with this thread, but just an observation about some of the replies.

Sitting in that hog, I have to admit that a part of me would have loved to own that thing. But that $10000 killed off any of those kinds of notions. And then too I have to wonder just how well it would handle the hills that I have. I know power would be no problem (it never is) but, even on my big Yamaha, I still feel the need to slide up toward the handlebars as far as possible. No such weight re-distribution possible with the mule. What you got is what you got. Probably would be a bit better on flat land or less aggressive hill-climbs, I don't know. I guess the other thing is that I seldom have a need for a 2nd passenger capability. The dump box would be useful down around the house. Maybe some day I'll win the lottery or something and can have both kinds of vehicles ..... lol.

I went to our local dealer the other day with my Brother-in-law so he could buy a helmet, and I got a look at some monster Kawasaki Mule. $10,000 price tag, and every kind of thing that you can stick on an ATV.The thing is so big that I would have to re-do all my trails just to make the thing fit along them. I'm really wondering how far these guys are going to go with these things....lol. First of all, I can't imagine paying $10,000 for a toy. If I'm going to spend that much, I'd better be making part of my income off of it or at least I'd better be able to ride it into town and back .....lol. The other thing is just the size of it. My gosh they have taken all the fun out of riding these things. I remember my first ATV was a Suzuki Quadrunner. It had all of 185 cc for an engine. The thing was a blast to ride. you could apply a little bit of body-english with it and make that thing do all kinds of fancy handling. Now the ATVs are just great big fat bloated pigs that you just sit on. Yup, some of that is a real good thing, especially for work vehicles. I use my big fat Yamaha for snow plowing, and the 4-wheel drive and monsterous weight is a good thing. But this piggy Kawasaki that I was looking at was so darn big, I would lose all the maneuverability that makes these vehicles such a good thing. Oh well, I guess for a lot of consumers, bigger is always better. I usually agree, but for me, on this style of vehicle, they are moving beyond anything that I will ever want.

The kind of a study that I was talking about was something that compares the cost of the current (or proposed) pheasant rearing and management program to the amount of revenue provided by pheasant hunters in terms of fees and taxable financial benefits to NYS businesses, etc. You know, the kinds of studies they always refer to when explaining some of the financial benefits to the state of any hunting programs. They may not have ever done such a study specifically for pheasant programs. However that link that you provided was a pretty interesting read. It just didn't quite get to the question I was asking. But they did show a significant decline in pheasant habitat in this state and why the pheasant rearing programs are getting harder to justify and more and more controversial.

No doubt about it, there certainly are a lot of self deluded people around ..... lol. I prefer the video evidence to somebody's undocumented boasting. Now, I have seen a video of a guy who was doing some pretty amazing 100 yard shots with a compound. I also have seen filmed trick shots by Howard hill with his longbow. I also attended a live show with Stacey Groscup shooting aspirins out of the air with his recurve and nailing all kinds of other flying targets out of the air. And we have all seen Byron Fergusen on TV doing things with bows that 99.99% of all archers can't do. So I know there are a few very talented archers. However, I suspect the shooting on the PSE crossbow video most likely had more to do with the equipment than any kind of Byron Fergusen type of talent.

Unfortunately, that rub is in the middle of a very big hill and he is pretty darn good about not leaving a track or anything. For me, rubs are exciting, but seldom have I ever had them lead me to any close encounters. It always seems that by the time hunting season rolls around, they have re-located to somewhere else. But it is always better to at least know there is a buck somewhere in the area. It makes the wait on stand a little more interesting.

And yet it is no real trick to find many of videos like the one that was posted here. Amazing isn't it?

http://huntingny.com/forums/topic/5169-first-rubs/

If you do succumb to the "gotta havits", just make sure you don't get rid of the old bow. It sounds like you already own a perfectly good deer killing machine, so it is always good to be able to go back in case something ugly happens with the new bow.

I wonder if anyone has ever done any kind of study to see just what the cost/income ratio really is regarding the put and take pheasant stocking program. Apparently the costs are significant enough that they were talking about shutting down some of the pheasant rearing facilities. So I wonder how the costs compare to the revenues generated. Just curious.

I have been around archery for a bunch of decades, and have even done a fair share of tournament shooting, but I have never been able to shoot 100 yards with the precision that that guy with the PSE crossbow did. In fact, I really don't know anyone who can even come close to shooting that far, that well. About the closest person I have ever known to shoot that well with a vertical bow would be Darrell Pace at 100 meters. I would lay a lot of credit for that kind of crossbow accuracy to the fact that he is able to bench rest his crossbow. Whether that is accomplished with shooting off a bench as he was doing, or off a bi-pod, or off a fallen log, or simply off your knee as in a kneeling or sitting stance, it is something that no vertical bow shooter will ever be able to do. And of course give some credit to the fact that he can use a rifle scope in conjunction with the rock-solid rest features. As far as the noise factor, the growing number of crossbow hunts being shown on TV are beginning to show that that is not really a very huge factor. If I had to point to one big drawback to a crossbow, it would be the awkwardness of walking around with a big heavy "T"-shaped weapon. That has to be a pain.

This stinking weather has put a crimp in my practice regimen. It's pretty sloppy out there. But maybe it's a good thing not to shoot too much. With my luck, i'll just break something....lol.

I think you're the only one who can make the decision for you. I tend to be in the camp that says if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But then I am known to be a little bit tight with my money. There's no doubt that technology has made progress in the last decade, but I have bows on my wall that date back to the 70's that have killed deer just as dead as the most teched-out version on the market today. I suspect that you are just getting an itch to spend some money and get something that you won't be kidded about ..... lol. I've certainly been there, and I have a wall full of thousands of dollars worth of bows, arrows and tackle to show for it. If you want it and have the extra money to spend ...... buy something and get that out of your system. However, just acknowledge that you are getting it because you just want it. I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time trying to justify it ..... just do it! Besides, the economy could use your help.